Autobiography of a Yogi vs The Iliad
Both counted from their full texts, the same way, on the same day.
1,430words between them — 6 min of it
Autobiography of a Yogi is longer — 154,777 words against 153,347 for The Iliad, a difference of 1,430 words or about 6 min of extra reading. The Iliad is the harder read, at grade 13.5 against 9.8.
SOURCE·Project Gutenberg full texts·both editions counted the same way·REVIEWED JUL 2026
Side by side
| Autobiography of a Yogi | The Iliad | |
|---|---|---|
| Author | Yogananda, Paramahansa | Homer |
| Words | 154,777 | 153,347 |
| Reading time at 250 wpm | 10h 19m | 10h 13m |
| Unique words | 14,983 | 7,720 |
| Sentences | 8,540 | 4,262 |
| Average sentence length | 18.1 words | 36 words |
| Reading grade | 9.8 | 13.5 |
| Reading ease | 57.3 | 62.4 |
| Long words | 13.8% | 4.7% |
Highlighted cells are the larger figure — except reading ease, where higher means easier.
SOURCE·Project Gutenberg full texts·both editions, same counting rule·REVIEWED JUL 2026
How this is worked out
- Both texts are counted the same way, from the same source, with Gutenberg's header and licence footer struck first.
- The gap is stated in words and then in time at 250 words a minute — the rate is printed because a duration without one cannot be checked.
- Difficulty is compared on Flesch–Kincaid grade, which reads sentence and word length only. It cannot see irony or dialect, so treat it as a measure of surface, not of effort.
gap = |154,777 − 153,347| = 1,430 words 1,430 ÷ 250 wpm = 6 min of extra reading
The second question
Which is longer, Autobiography of a Yogi or The Iliad?
Autobiography of a Yogi is longer — 154,777 words against 153,347 for The Iliad, a difference of 1,430 words or about 6 min of extra reading. The Iliad is the harder read, at grade 13.5 against 9.8.
Colophon
Both figures computed from Project Gutenberg plain-text editions — ebook no. 7452 and no. 2199 — and from no other source. Neither book’s text is set on this site.
SOURCE·Project Gutenberg full texts·US public domain·REVIEWED JUL 2026
Word counts and reading levels are computed from a specific public-domain edition and will differ from other editions and from other counting methods — see the method page.
